Steve Forbes is one of those guys who can handle major defeats because he's certain that, despite it all, he really is winning the war.

And he'll provide plenty of evidence that the faint shouting you hear is not really the sound of his troops retreating in disarray but of glorious and successful landings on distant shores.

Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia — each has adopted a flat-rate income tax. China is even thinking of it.

And yet, Forbes still can't establish a beachhead in the United States with his 17 percent flat tax plan, a decade after he used it as a platform to run for the Republican presidential nomination. He has tried to jump start things with a new book, "Flat Tax Revolution: Using a Postcard to Abolish the IRS."

He spoke to me by telephone last week, part of his plan to drum up support among the grass roots in the nation's middle. This is all he has left — Internet blogs and Web sites — now that he no longer is in demand on talk shows. Ours was a timely conversation, considering how Utah's leaders are discussing whether to impose a flat tax here.

Forbes comes across as someone who feels assured that, like Vincent Van Gogh, he may not be recognized for his genius until after he is gone. Or, at least, that his ideas won't catch on until he fades far enough into the background.

He chuckles at little ironies. When he ran for president, he was ridiculed as the guy with the "nutty" tax idea. But now, magazines such as The Economist and others are beginning to discuss seriously the worldwide trend toward a flat tax.

"Hong Kong has done this for almost 60 years," he said. "Now, eastern and central European countries are doing it."

Speaking of ironies, Russia, once the antithesis of American freedom, installed a 13 percent flat tax in 2001 while the United States has a top rate that is inching its way down, under the Bush tax cuts, from 39.6 percent to 33 percent.

Forbes' plan hasn't changed at all in 10 years. It would come with a standard $13,200 exemption for every adult. Each child would be worth an additional $4,000 exemption. He would include a refundable credit of $1,000 for each child who is 16 or younger, and would keep the current system that allows a refund if a family's child-tax credit is greater than the amount of federal taxes owed.